The uncomfortable truth is that because fashion
is indeed 'made from nature', its current industrial practices gobble up
staggering quantities of water, chemicals and fossil fuels, degrading the land
and the diversity of nature's species while belching out 1.9 billion tonnes of
waste per year.
Dilys Williams, Director of the Centre for Sustainable
Fashion; Professor of Fashion Design for Sustainability, London College of
Fashion
As the demands on the Earth's resources by the fashion
industry continue to grow, innovative research is underway to address the
impact on the natural world. Ranging from synthetic biology to the use of root
structures as potential fibres, these creative solutions and their early
adoption by the industry indicate a willingness to change and become more
sustainable in the future.
Opinion
Fashion
Jess
Cartner-Morley
Unless the industry starts taking sustainability
seriously, it risks becoming the thing it most dreads – uncool
Thu 16 Sep
2021 16.30 BST
Fashion has
become a dirty word – and believe me, it hurts. Not long ago, fashion was the
VIP room of popular culture and movie stars and politicians flocked to the
front row. Now it has come to symbolise everything that is wrong with the
modern world – from carbon emissions to global inequality and from crass
materialism to unrealistic beauty standards. Fashion is not the only polluting
industry, or the only morally dubious one. But even if you love fashion, as I
do, it’s hard to deny that it tracks in the 99th percentile for pretty much all
of the most problematic contemporary issues.
Everyone in
fashion knows that they need to get back on the right side of history, and
fast. Sustainability is a baseline responsibility that every self-respecting
brand must be seen to engage with. The New York brand Collina Strada last week
staged one of the first live shows of the first back-to-real-life catwalk
season on the rooftop of Brooklyn Grange, an organic city farm that donates 30%
of its produce to community members with limited means. Much of the collection
was made out of “deadstock” – fabric and product that already exists, rather
than being newly produced. Clothes made in 2020, which had been stuck in
lockdown and never shipped or sold, were cut up and repurposed into something
new. “Old birthday presents” were taken apart and reassembled into beaded bags
and rhinestone jewellery, said the designer Hillary Taymour. Taymour was
rewarded with a benediction in the form of Ella Emhoff, stepdaughter of the
vice-president, Kamala Harris, applauding from the front row.
There is a
powerful business case for fashion to find its conscience: consumers
increasingly demand it. Responsible production has become the hallmark of a
respectable brand. To the people of Idaho, Washington and Oregon, who recently
endured intense heatwaves, the fact that it takes 2,700 litres of water to
produce a single cotton T-shirt in a world where droughts are becoming more
common probably feels like more of an urgent issue. LVMH, the world’s biggest
luxury group, faces the prospect of carbon emissions from the fashion industry
affecting its lucrative alcohol business. “If climate increases a couple of
degrees in the next 25 years, then we simply will not be able to make champagne
in Champagne anymore … our economic future depends on the climate change being
reduced,” wrote Antoine Arnault of LVMH in Womenswear Daily last year.
Sustainability
is not a new issue. What does feel very different this time around, as the
industry gathers for the first shows and cocktail parties since the olden
times, is fashion’s psychological state. Establishment figures are aware that
for the first time in their careers, what they do is seen as a bit, well,
uncool. This year has seen a steady exodus of editors from fashion magazines to
tech. Netflix recently hired editors of Allure and Them, while TikTok hired
Vanessa Craft from the Canadian edition of Elle. Silicon Valley doesn’t just
have deep pockets: it’s also seen as the place to be.
For years,
fashion waved away criticism with the cry that we all need escapism, a defence
that rings increasingly hollow against the seriousness of the charges. “Covid
and the climate emergency both show that money and luxury can’t protect you
from the real world,” the British designer Roland Mouret told me this week. “That
fashion fantasy of a beautiful woman in a gown on an exotic beach – I don’t
think that resonates now, because that kind of perfection just doesn’t exist
any more.” Wilful escapism feels twee and old-fashioned in an age when it is
cool to engage. Billie Eilish played out a Marilyn Monroe fantasy on the Met
Gala red carpet this week, wearing a fairytale blush silk ballgown by Oscar de
la Renta – but in return, the brand agreed to a request by Eilish, a vegan
animal rights activist, that it would stop using fur in all collections with
immediate effect. That is the stuff young girls’ dreams are made of – these
days.
The Met
Gala was a glitzy showcase of fashion’s new progressive bent. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s
“Tax the rich” dress grabbed the headlines. Versha Sharma, editor of Teen
Vogue, carried a clutch bag engraved with the words “Protect Roe / Kill the
Filibuster” in response to the Texas abortion ban. Jonathan Anderson, the
British designer of the Spanish luxury house Loewe, collaborated with actor and
writer Dan Levy to dress him as “a gay superhero” in a polo shirt embroidered
with an artwork of two men kissing, which Levy described as a celebration “of
queer love and visibility”. In support of the message, Loewe made a donation to
an organisation promoting Aids awareness and education.
But
although the emotional engagement with social justice and the climate emergency
is real, action is not happening at the speed required. (As so often, fashion
reflects the rest of the world in this – just in a more exaggerated and
exasperating form.) There is still far too much talk of “raising awareness”
around sustainability, which with less than three months to go until Cop26 is
the equivalent of liking photos of stable doors on Instagram after the horse
has bolted. A new report on greenwashing, published this week by Eco-Age and
the Geneva Centre for Business and Human Rights, reports that while “all major
fashion brands claim to be engaged in sustainability efforts … many are
struggling and indeed failing, because they are using a flawed definition of
sustainability, unscientific methods and selective implementation”. The report
also identifies “greenwishing” – fancying oneself less environmentally harmful
than one is in reality – to be a problem in fashion.
By
producing too many clothes, the fashion industry has not just harmed the
climate, it has also undermined its own status. A dress in the new season
silhouette or a pair of boots in autumn’s hot new shade were once aspirational
objects. But a two-decade deluge of cheap-as-chips items has left the world
disdainful of clothes – and, as a result, tired of fashion. Fashion faces a
stark choice: keep flogging cheap clothes, or get back in vogue.
Jess Cartner-Morley
is associate editor (fashion) at the Guardian
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